12/01/03 (Real world)

<Note: All text hereafter, except the heading, is written in a coded form of Draconic>

IF THIS JOURNAL IS FOUND, THERE IS A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD FOR ITS RETURN TO HANREL TANNISON, IN THE CITY OF ERDAENOS

To: Hanrel Tannison
Order of the Erdaenos Collectors
Library of Erdaenos
City of Erdaenos

From: Dain Lonair
Lake of Lost Voices
2 Days Walk South of Gahanis

Re: Mission Report 8

Date: 20 Fifthmonth 1757

The next day, we compared recollections regarding what we had seen within the temple thus far. Based on crude outlines we were able to draw from memory of the map of the interior of the place, we concluded that the only remaining area left unexplored was the rather smelly area, which I have called The Privy Room. We therefore had our breakfast, took one last look at the midnight room, and moved out.

We have aptly named our destination The Privy Room, for its stench was overwhelming as we approached. Entering, we discovered the source of the odoriferousness. The room was, indeed, a privy of sorts. All manner of garbage and refuse lay strewn about the place, which led up a disgusting set of stairs to the regions above.

Sniktari was the first to make his way past the garbage, and began to climb the stairs. Meanwhile, I began to delicately but diligently dig through the debris in search of any clue to the origin of the temple, the bandits, or treasure. One never knows what one will find in the oddest of places.

Unfortunately, sometimes what one finds in such places is danger. And that is indeed what I turned up. While lifting a particularly disgusting sheaf of refuse with my scimitar, I discovered a writhing, living being beneath the layer of junk. The Akashic Record immediately informed me about the creature - a Violet Fungus, a deadly living growth that would not hesitate to eat me alive.

I struck at the thing at once, removing a portion of fungus from some part of it's upper "body". Iyri was next to jump to assist me, hurling a magically conjured mudball at the despicable wretch - which unfortunately went wide of it's target, joining the rest of the garbage in a heap against the wall. Roksha, however, was not so ill-aimed, and struck it deep with an arrow which whizzed by my outstretched sword arm. Finally, I put the thing down with one final mighty blow, fortunate that the fungus never had an opportunity to strike back at us with it's deadly and filth-ridden tentacles.

I took a small sample of the thing for further analysis at a later date. Between it and my mushroom samples, I felt I had quite the collection of rare fungus to pour over when we returned to town. Now there's something interesting to look forward to.

Looking up, I realized that Sniktari was back in our room, back covered with refuse. Apparently his first attempt to climb the stairs had failed, and he had fallen back down into the room, no worse for wear (except perhaps his pride).

Not pleased with our noticing the results of his accident, Sniktari bounded back up the stairs, this time successfully reaching the top. He waved an all quiet sign to us, and moved on out of sight into the darkness of the upper chamber.

We waited briefly, and then followed. Roksha and Iyri had little trouble making it up the stairs, despite the slippery coating which made such an assent difficult. Gür and I, on the other hand, ran into a bit of trouble. My armor weighed me down to such an extent that, what appeared to be a simple matter became all too complicated. (DM's Note: This was a complete Keystone Cops moment. The two of them were trying to help each other up the stairs. Every time, one of them would fail and start to fall, only to be caught by the other. Then the one catching would fall, only to be caught by the other. Funniest moment of the evening by far.)

Eventually, Sniktari returned, and lowered a rope to assist us in our climb. Eventually, with Gür's assistance and that of the rope, along with Sniktari's pulling from above, I was able to make it up the stairs. I hope there is another exit from this place, as I do not ever wish to visit those stairs or the Privy Room below ever again.

The chamber above is what I shall call the Partition Room. Many stone partitions, each about 5' high, zig-zagged across the room. Such a configuration made movement through the chamber much slower than if we had a clear path through the room, and caused us to move back and fourth across the horizontal of the chamber in order to come to a point where we could proceed across the vertical. In addition, we found an empty 30' deep alcove which did not seem to serve much of a purpose, at least at first look.

At the far end we spotted a blank wall, which formed a T-intersection, with paths leading to either side away from the Partition room. A lantern burned brightly on the eastern wall, hooded and pointed in our direction. Clearly, someone had been here recently.

Sniktari suddenly called us to a halt. He whispered that he spotted an arrow-slit, or something shaped rather like it, on the far side of the room, and he felt this might be a trap. Sniktari was having none of this partition nonsense, and decided to tumble and bound across the tops of the partitions to reach the lantern and extinguish its light. Our darkvision, granted by the magic of the Midnight Room below, would serve us better in such a situation.

Sniktari's plan worked wonderfully. He was able to make it across the tops of the partitions, and put out the lantern in no time. It took us all a moment for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, but quickly the shapes of the room became to formulate again, and we proceeded through the partition maze towards the far side of the room.

While we were about mid-way through the partitions, the sounds of an arrow striking the wall could be clearly heard. Indeed, some of our party had even spotted the arrow being shot from what was now most certainly known to be an arrow-slit. This was indeed an ambush, and we were lucky our attacker did not seem to have very good aim while in the dark.

Sniktari, the closest to the arrow-slit, briefly paused to glance into the room on the other side, and then moved on down the hall to our right, out of the line of fire, with Gür not far behind. Iyri and I took the opposite route, moving to the left, also out of the range of fire. Roksha decided to meet the threat head-on, firing an arrow at the arrow-slit from the wrong side. Surprisingly, the arrow did fly right into the arrow-slit, but it's tail brushed against the opening, and it flew just slightly off-course.

Iyri and I found little down the left most corridor, and decided to turn back towards the others. Gür and Sniktari, however, found plenty. Apparently, a small horde of bandits were changing towards them, down a hallway that connected to the right-most corridor, and which came from the direction of what was probably quite near the arrow-slit room.

A slew of arrows fell upon Sniktari and Gür, but they were able to shrug them off with ease, as they charged their foes. Sniktari slew one with a deadly slash of his claws, while Gür easily impaled another on his longsword. Two quite dead bandits dropped to the ground, leaving two more rather less enthusiastic bandits to go. Seeing their allies felled so readily, they decided that retreat was the better part of valor in this situation...and fled back down the 40' corridor they had just recently traversed. Gür and Sniktari could not reach them in time, and they were able to flee into a nearby room and slam the door behind them.

Gür and I pursued the fleeing bandits, while Sniktari growled something about finding that walking corpse of a cowardly bandit hiding behind an arrow-slit, and ran off.

The door behind which the two bandits had fled was well-locked. I suggested to Gür that I try and pick the lock, and Gür responded with a forceful smash of his shoulder against the door. Apparently, he thought he had a better way, so I joined in. A solid kick from me burst the door open, and I heard Gür mention "I loosened it for you". Right...

As soon as the door was fully open, the bandits let fly a volley of arrows at Gür and I. One hit me in the shoulder, stinging a bit, but not so much that I could not continue. Gür moved in, and I behind him, prepared for battle.

Gür assumed a battle stance beside one bandit. Knowing that the bandit would have trouble dealing with a foe on either side of him, I opted to take up the position directly opposite Gür. The bandit took a swipe at me as I ran by, but using a bow as a club was never a particularly effective means of harming anyone, and it had no effect on my flanking maneuver.

Knowing they were out-manned and out-maneuvered, the two bandits decided to try and make a run for it again. One made a dash past Iyri, who Iyri hit with her staff on the way by. The other dashed down the corridor, only to be struck by one of Roksha's arrows, and then felled by Gür's mighty swordarm.

Iyri's target kept running, so she hit him with another magical mudball. This time, the earthen missile struck true, harming the bandit and also blinding him. Roksha, not wanting him to stagger away, finished the man with one of his arrows before I could yell "We need them alive!". Too late, the man was dead.

Sniktari soon returned, bloody, reporting that we would no longer be having trouble from the arrow-slit room. We all had no doubt as to what he meant.

I began to treat the wounds of one of the still-living bandits, while Sniktari followed my lead and tried to stabilize another. Alas, my patient was too far gone, and he expired before I could get a bandage around him. Sniktari had better luck, barely saving the mans life. He thought the man would be out of commission for very many hours, and dragged him back into the room he had fled from.

The room itself turned out to be a barracks. Searching all the bodies and the room, I turned up 750 gold pieces, a deck of cards valued at around 2 gold pieces, and two kegs of decent beer, valued at around 6 gold pieces. In addition, I found a wondrous Giantish ceremonial mask, made by an artisan of obvious talent. I estimated the work to be valued between 1000 and 1400 gold pieces, though a better estimate would only come with closer inspection over a longer period of time. I packed away what we found, except the beer, and moved on.

The arrow-slit room contained some valuables as well. I discovered a box of about 120 candles, a pitcher of potable water, and three barrels of lantern oil containing all-told about 20 pints of oil. We decided to take our fill each of some candles and oil, and leave the rest for later.

Finally, we came upon a second barracks, virtually identical to the first, which contained another 81 gold pieces, 15 silver pieces, and a silver comb which I estimated was worth about 15 gold pieces. There were also 2 beds, 92 masterwork arrows, 5 leather jacks, 5 short bows, 5 short swords, and 20 gold pieces all-told, between the second barracks room and the bodies of the bandits. We took the coins and comb, while Roksha took his fill of masterwork arrows, leaving his own arrows and the rest of the weapons behind, stashed securely beneath one of the beds. We would try to come back later to retrieve this booty before we left the temple.

We returned to the left corridor which Iyri and I had briefly explored earlier, and found a lumber-storage room. If we ever decided to stay in this place, it was certainly well equipped for further construction.

Traveling a ways away from the barracks, we came on an empty kitchen, and a well filled with drinking water (which Sniktari inartfully sampled with his whole head).

Finally, we snuck our way towards a lighted room with soft noises. Somehow, we all made it into the room safely, without alerting anyone to our presence (even me, in my clunky armor). We spotted five bandits in the room, apparently playing cards at a table in the center of the room.

Sniktari apparently had some kind of plan, as he started to retreat out of the room. I don't know what happened to his usual stealth...perhaps he tripped on something, or maybe he just took a misstep. Whatever the cause, he made some noise on his way out, which alerted the bandits to our presence. Our ambush was blown!

Gür decided it was time to react. He charged into the room, lit a pint of oil, and tossed it towards the card table. The oil landed on target, but failed to light.

I thought Gür's idea, however, was novel, and decided to follow suit. Withdrawing my home-made alchemists fire, I tossed the vial at the nearest bandit. It struck true, exploding in fire across the bandit's shoulder, and splashing across most of the other bandits around the table. Boy did they look unhappy.

If they thought that was bad, they had never seen Iyri in action. For that matter, I hadn't seen Iyri as filled with passion as I did at that moment. Somehow enthralled by the fire in front of her, Iyri moved towards the bandits, and crushed some sort of gem in her hand as she shouted and pointed towards the bandits. Fire exploded from the card table, engulfing most of the bandits in a blast so powerful I felt the heat and gust of wind all the way back where I stood, far away from the bandits.

Two bandits fell immediately - including the one which I had struck with the alchemists fire, who emitted the odor of cooked flesh as his form more melted than slumped into the ground.

Three more fled the table, their armor aflame, screaming. Sniktari pursued and killed one, as Iyri and Roksha went after another. Iyri flung another mudball at a her target, downing him swiftly, as Gür intimidated another into a corner, while Sniktari slew him where he stood. The battle was over before we knew it, and none of our party had even been scratched in the fiery melee.

Sniktari treated the wounds of the only still-breathing bandit, and dragged his now unconscious form back to the barracks, beside the other still-living bandit from earlier. While he did this, I assessed what was left of the room.

Waiting for the fires to go out, I was able to retrieve about 100 gold pieces of melted gold - which was all that remained of the bandit's bet on the table. I found an additional 5 gold pieces, 5 short swords, and nothing else on the mostly-melted bodies. This was indeed a brutal attack we had made, and we were definitely not going to see the higher bounty paid for many living bandits at this rate.

We decided to tackle the rest of the temple before we rested. We had yet to see any sign of this mysterious woman who sought the orb, nor the bandit leader, or the orb and book. Perhaps they lay deeper within the upper-reaches of the temple.

In the name, the word, and the symbol of the Order of the Erdaenos Collectors,

Dain Lonair, apprentice.

<480 experience each>
<150 experience for Iyri for Role Playing vote>